A planned apartment complex in Longmont will include design elements aimed at making the transition from homelessness to stable housing easier for the city’s formally unhoused residents, say city officials.
The Sunset Permanent Supportive Housing project will include 55 one-bedroom units that will add to Longmont’s affordable housing stock. The project also is part of an ongoing effort to provide stable housing to the city’s longtime homeless, Alice Sueltenfuss, executive director of HOPE, orHomeless Outreach Providing Encouragement.
“This is the first year that Longmont has had housing to offer the unhoused,” Sueltenfuss said in an email. “We are excited that our clients can get housing in their own city, where they have lived for many years.”
“Unlike Boulder, Longmont has unhoused individuals who truly call Longmont home,” she said.
The Sunset complex will include private reading areas, improved sightlines and soundproof offices for residents to consult with case managers, city officials said.
Molly O’Donnell, Longmont’s housing and community investment manager, last week, described the complex’s design to the Longmont Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, who are city council members. The architecture is a “trauma-informed design” aimed at providing formerly homeless residents with privacy while also maintaining security, she said.
This will “make this community feel like a home for those that have had struggles with their life that affect their ability to be successful in maintaining housing,” O’Donnell said.
Boulder-based Element Housing is developing the project. Element has produced similar affordable housing in Boulder. Element officials could not be reached for comment.
Residents will have gone through the region’s coordinated entry program to attain permanent housing and will be paired with supportive services to maintain their stability, O’Donnell said.
The Sunset’s 55 new units will help the city meet the regional affordable housing goal of 12% of all housing units in Longmont being affordable by 2035. Longmont needs to create about 200 new units per year to reach that goal. O’Donnell said.
“This project gets us well on our way to meeting that annual goal,” she said. “It is also serving our community’s most vulnerable, which is a particularly critical need and the hardest housing to provide.”
That makes the Sunset project “a special accomplishment,” O’Donnell said.
The Sunset Permanent Supportive Housing project is scheduled to open in 2024, near the Suites Apartments at 2000 Sunset Way. A formal name for the development has yet to be determined.
